Archive for the tag “Coronado Brewing Company”

This “imperial pumpkin beer” and highly anticipated fall seasonal from San Diego-based Coronado Brewing Companypours a burnt orange with a slight, white sand-colored head. True to its NOFX-inspired name, it smells of drunken pumpkins, both the flesh and the seeds, along with dark fruits and autumnal spices. Punk’in Drublic brings robust pumpkin pie flavors to the front on the first sip, with subtle cinnamon and allspice notes that become more pronounced on subsequent swallows, but it’s still more pumpkin-y and less kitschy or sweet than most beers in this style. It’s a real rarity – a pumpkin beer with complexity, as brown sugar and honey sweetness play off the savory spices and juicy pumpkin.

This “barley wine aged in oak bourbon barrels” is from Coronado Brewing in San Diego, which of course in German means “a whale’s vagina.” Old Scallywag pours as silky smooth as the beard of Zeus, a clear and dark maple with a tight tan head. The aroma is a formidable scent. It stings the nostrils…in a good way, with waves of bourbon, dried and dark fruits, roasted nuts, barrel wood, brown sugar, and maple candy enticing the nose like a jazz flute solo. I wanna be friends with it. It’s delicious on the first swallow, more English than American barley wine, with brown sugar sweetness, wood bitterness, and a bready texture dominating up front, and ending as clean as a nice pair of slacks. Some apple and tea enter the picture as the beer rests on the tongue, and the overall effect is not unlike a wood-fired apple pie drizzled in scotchy scotch scotch. Beer drinkers assemble!

This “Belgian-style IPA” from San Diego-based Coronado pours a cloudy gold with a lovely white head and a curious nose of citrus, green tea, and roots. Very flowery up front – fresh grass and dandelions – with a very obvious hop presence, although it fades out with some of those green tea and root flavors suggested in the nose. I don’t quite understand what is especially “Belgian” about this beer – it has more herbal tones than the quasi-tropical nature I associate with the pale beers of the region. But don’t be discouraged by this case of mistaken identity – Hoppy Daze is still an original and pretty damn good to boot, offering an oddly satisfying mix of pink bubblegum, sasparilla root, and grass.

Our number one goal on our SoCal “beer-cation” was to sample new beers, and we especially wanted to find beers from breweries that we have never tried before. In our five days in San Diego and the LA area, we managed to check 10 new breweries off our beer list:

In the whirl of brewery tours, bar hops, and taster samples, it was easy for some new brews to get lost in the mix, but there were some definite standouts. These are my 5 personal favorite new beers that I sampled on the SoCal trip: